pennyspoetryfandomcom-20200214-history
Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews (born February 14, 1930) is an American poet and author of novels, short fiction, and essays. Life Born in New York City to an upper-class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947. He left Princeton in his sophomore year for a tour in the United States Navy, during the course of which (in 1949) he eloped with artist Niki de Saint Phalle, a childhood friend. His military service completed, Mathews transferred to Harvard University in 1950; the couple's 1st child, Laura Duke Condominas was born the following year. After Mathews graduated in 1952 with a B.A. in music, the family moved to Europe; a second child, their son Phillip, was born in 1955. Mathews and de Saint Phalle separated in 1960. Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, one of Mathews's chief early influences) from 1961 to 1962. The late French writer Georges Perec was a good friend, and the two translated some of each other's writings. Mathews is currently married to the writer Marie Chaix and divides his time between Paris, Key West, and New York. Mathews is the inventor of "Mathews' Algorithm," a method for producing literary works by transmuting elements (for instance, a starting text) according to a predetermined set of rules. Writing Novels Mathews's earliest 3 novels share a common approach, though their stories and characters are not connected. Originally published as separate works (the 3rd in serialization in The Paris Review), they were gathered in an omnibus volume in 1975 as The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, and other novels, but have since been reprinted as individual volumes. Each novel displays the author's knack for wildly improbable narrative invention, his gift for deadpan humor, and his delight in leading the reader down obscure (and often imaginary) avenues of learning. At the outset of his debust novel, The Conversions, the narrator is invited to an evening's social gathering at the home of a wealthy and powerful eccentric named Grent Wayl. During the course of the evening he is invited to take part in an elaborately staged party game, involving, among other things, a race between several small worms. The race having apparently been rigged by Wayl, the narrator is declared the victor and takes home his prize, an adze with curious designs, apparently of a ritual nature, engraved on it. Not long after the party, Wayl dies, and the bulk of his vast estate is left to whosoever possesses the adze, providing that he or she can answer three riddling questions relating to its nature. The balance of the book is concerned with the narrator's attempts to answer the three questions, attempts that lead him through a series of digressions and stories-within-a-story, many of them quite diverting in themselves. The book has some superficial affinities with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, but Mathews is at once easier to read (he is frequently quite funny ) and harder to pin down ; the reader, like the narrator, is never sure to what extent he has fallen victim to a hoax. Much of the material dealing with the ritual adze, and the underground cult that it is related to, borrows from Robert Graves's The White Goddess. The book concludes with 2 appendices, 1 in German. His next novel, ''Tlooth,'' begins in a bizarre Siberian prison camp, where the inmates are divided according to their affiliation with obscure religious denominations (Americanist, Darbyist, Defective Baptist, and so on), and where baseball, dentistry, and plotting revenge against other inmates are the chief pastimes. A small group of inmates, including the narrator, plot their escape, which they carry out by constructing an ingenious getaway vehicle. After fleeing south and over the Himalayas, they split up; the later sections of the novel, which take place in various locales (chiefly Italy), are concerned with the narrator's attempts to track down and do away with another inmate, Evelyn Roak, who had been responsible for mutilating the narrator's fingers. Most of the major characters have gender-ambivalent names, and it is only towards the end of the book that we are given some indication of whether they are actually male or female. As in The Conversions, there are numerous engaging subplots that advance the main action only minimally but which provide considerable amusement. ''The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium,'' like The Conversions, is the story of a hunt for treasure, this time told through a series of letters between a Southeast Asian woman named Twang and her American husband, Zachary McCaltex. The couple are researching the fate of a vanished cargo of gold that once belonged to the Medici family. As in the earlier novels, there are various odd occurrences and ambiguous conspiracies; many of the book's more interesting set-pieces revolve around a secret society (The Knights of the Spindle), which Zachary is invited to join. Reflecting the author's interest in different languages, one pivotal letter in the book is written in the (fictitious) idiom of Twang's (fictitious) homeland, and to translate it the reader must refer back to earlier chapters to find the meanings of the words. In a typical Mathews conceit, the title of the novel is apparently meaningless until the reader reaches the final pages, at which point it reveals an important twist in the story that is nowhere revealed in the text of the book itself. The novel is provided with an index, which may be deliberately unreliable. David Maurer's The Big Con provided Mathews with a number of slang terms, and possibly some plot elements as well. Another apparent source was The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank: 1397-1494 by Raymond de Roover; Mathews implicitly acknowledged his debt by introducing de Roover and his wife in the text as minor characters. Mathews's next novel, ''Cigarettes,'' marked a change in his work. Less whimsical but no less technically sophisticated than his first three novels, it consists of an interlocking series of narratives revolving around a small group of interconnected characters. The book's manner is generally quite realistic, and Cigarettes is ultimately quite moving in a way that none of his previous books attempted to be. ''My Life in CIA,'' his 2005 novel (if it is indeed fiction) is purportedly Mathews's memoir of a period in his life in which he was mistaken for a CIA agent and decided to play along and pretend that he was, with unintended consequences. Other works Mathews's shorter writings frequently cross or deliberately confuse genres. A case in point is the piece entitled "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)." Originally included in an issue of the literary magazine Antaeus devoted to travel essays, it is ostensibly a recipe with extended commentary, but was later used as the title story for a collection of the author's short fiction. Another example is the title section of Armenian Papers: Poems 1954 - 1984: actually prose, this purports to be (but evidently is not) a translation from a fragmentary medieval manuscript. Among the more important collections of his miscellaneous works are Immeasurable Distances, a gathering of his essays; The Human Country: New and collected stories; and The Way Home: Selected longer prose. Other works of interest include Twenty Lines a Day, a journal; and The Orchard, a brief memoir of his friendship with Georges Perec. Recognition Mathews was the 1st American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as the Oulipo, which is dedicated to exploring new possibilities in literature, in particular through the use of various constraints and algorithms. In popular culture Mathews, along with Marie Chaix, appears as a minor character in the novel What I Have Written by John A. Scott. He also appears as a minor character in the novel The Correspondence Artist by Barbara Browning. Publications Poetry * The Ring: Poems, 1956-69. Leeds, UK: Juillard Editions, 1970. * The Planisphere: Poems. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1974. * Le Savoir des rois: poèmes à perverbes. Paris: Bibliothèque oulipienne'' (#5), 1975.'' * Trial Impressions. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1977. * Armenian Papers: Poems, 1954-1984. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-691-01440-X * Out of Bounds. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1989. ISBN 0-930901-61-4 * A Mid-Season Sky: Poems, 1954-1991. Manchester: Carcanet, 1992. * Day Shifts (with Jean-Marc Scanreigh). Brussels: Editions de la Mule de Cristal, 2004. * The New Tourism. Key West, FL: Sand Paper Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9843312-3-9 Novels * The Conversions. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1962; New York: Random House, 1962; Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1997. ISBN 1-56478-166-6 * Tlooth. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966; Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1998. ISBN 1-56478-194-1 * The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, and other novels. New York: Harper & Row, 1975; **''The Sinkig of the Odrakek Stadium''. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1984; Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1999. ISBN 1-56478-207-7 * Cigarettes: A novel. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987; Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1998. ISBN=1-55584-092-2 *''The Journalist: A novel''. Boston: David R. Godine Books, 1994; Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1997. ISBN 978-1-56478-165-9 Short fiction * Selected Declarations of Dependence (with Alex Katz). Calais, VT: Z Press, 1977; Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1996. (poems & short fiction) * Country Cooking, and other stories. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1980. ISBN 0-930900-82-0 * Plaisirs singuliers. Paris: P.O.L., 1983. (fiction, in French) **''Singular Pleasures'' (with Francesco Clemente). New York: Grenfell Press, 1988; Dalkey Archive, 1999. ISBN 978-1-56478-233-5 * Sainte Catherine (fiction, in French). Paris: P.O.L., 2000. * The Human Country: New and collected stories. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2002. ISBN 1-56478-321-9 Non-fiction * La Verger (memoir, in French) . Paris: P.O.L., 1986. ** The Orchard: A Remembrance of Georges Perec. Flint, MI: Bamberger Books, 1988. * Immeasurable Distances: The collected essays. Venice, CA: Lapis Press, 1991. ISBN 0-932499-43-0 * Giandomenico Tiepolo (essay). Charenton: Editions Flohic, 1993. ISBN 2-908958-65-1 * The Case of the Persevering Maltese, and other essays. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 2003. ISBN 978-1-56478-288-5 * My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56478-392-8 Collaborations * S: Semaines de Suzanne (with Jean Echenoz, Mark Polizzotti, Florence Delay, Olivier Rolin, Sonja Greenlee, & Patrick Deville). Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1997. Collected editions * The Way Home: Collected longer prose New York: Grenfell Press, 1988 ISBN 1-900565-05-6; London: Atlas Press, 1989. * Écrits français. Paris: Oulipo, 1990. Edited * Oulipo Compendium (with Alastair Brotchie). London: Atlas Press, 1998. ISBN 0-947757-96-1 Letters and journals * 20 Lines a Day (journal). Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1988. ISBN 0-916583-41-4 Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Harry Mathews 1930, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 6, 2014. See also *List of U.S. poets References *Leamon, Warren Harry Mathews (1993) ISBN 0-8057-4008-2 *McPherson, William "Harry Mathews: A Checklist" The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Harry Mathews Number (1987) Notes External links ;Poems *"The New Tourism" ;Prose *Mathews, Harry Translation and the Oulipo: The Case of the Persevering Maltese ;Audio / video *Harry Mathews poems at The Sienese Shredder #1 *Harry Mathews at YouTube ;Books *Harry Matthews at Amazon.com ;About *Composing: Harry Mathews' Words & Worlds *The Novelist who was also a Spy, or Not, New York Times *Beer, John Reading Harry Mathews * *[http://www.kwls.org/littoral/the_epithalamium_of_harry_math/ The Epithalamium of Harry Mathews] *Review of "My Life in CIA" from nthposition.com Category:1930 births Category:American essayists Category:American novelists Category:American poets Category:American short story writers Category:Groton School alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Living people Category:Oulipo members Category:United States Navy sailors Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets